The Bitcoin Bubble

I will admit that I don't understand the first thing about Bitcoin, the people behind it, or what in the hell made it different from the days when we paid doctors with chickens or cut up goats to appease the gods. But nothing about this sounds good at all.

For now, there's no telling what's behind the shutdown. Mt.Gox did not respond to requests for comment. However, an unverified document called "Crisis Strategy Draft" that is being circulated online claims Mt.Gox has lost 744,408 of its users' bitcoins, worth nearly $367 million. It also claims Mt.Gox is planning to rebrand itself as Gox. Mt.Gox has been mired in problems ever since Feb. 7, when it halted withdrawalsfrom its trading accounts. The company's computer programmers hadn't accounted for a quirk in the way Bitcoin works, allowing cyber attackers to dupe Mt.Gox with a scheme resembling receipt fraud. When Mt.Gox discovered it was under attack, it stopped any investors from pulling their money out of their trading platform -- but it has yet to allow them access to their money.